VA secretary grilled on Nazi grave markers at military cemeteries

WASHINGTON — Veterans Affairs Secretary Robert Wilkie on Thursday wouldn’t commit to removing three headstones containing swastikas and messages honoring Adolf Hitler from the graves of German prisoners of war, frustrating House lawmakers.

Wilkie said he wanted to work with members of Congress to put such antiSemitic and racist imagery in the proper “historical context.”

“I happen to think that making sure that when people visit our cemeteries they are educated and informed of the horror is an incredibly important thing to do,” Wilkie said during testimony before the House Military Construction-VA Appropriations subcommittee. “Erasing these headstones removes them from memory and as we continue to study the Holocaust, the last thing any Holocaust scholar wants to do is erase that memory.”

Subcommittee Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Fla., was not satisfied with Wilkie’s answer. She said the presence of such imagery in cemeteries that are home to World War II veterans, who died fighting Nazis and the ideology they represented, is unacceptable.

“The Nazi swastika is prohibited in Germany from being displayed because it is not seen as a reminder to prevent the hatred that it spawned; it is seen as something to be snuffed out,” she said. Wasserman-Schultz was referencing a German law that prevents public displays of “symbols of unconstitutional organizations” such as the Nazi salute and swastikas, although some images are allowed in video games.

The VA cemeteries in question — Fort Sam Houston National Cemetery in Texas and Fort Douglas Post Cemetery in Utah — contain the remains of the German soldiers and the Nazi inscriptions.

According to the National Cemetery Administration, which is housed within the VA, the two cemeteries were under the U.S. Army’s jurisdiction in the 1940s when the remains were buried and grave markers erected. Fort Sam Houston was transferred to the VA in 1973, with Fort Douglas Post following in 2019.